DWP breaks silence over 'prosecutions' and who'll be taken to court

The DWP has admitted that it is only able to prosecute "big, organised" fraud cases due to a significant backlog in the courts.
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The Department for Work and Pensions has issued an update on benefit fraud prosecutions and who will be taken to court. The DWP has admitted that it is only able to prosecute "big, organised" fraud cases due to a significant backlog in the courts.

The news comes amid a huge increase in taxpayers' money lost to fraudsters, which rose from £2.1 billion in 2019 to £7.4 billion in 2024. An additional £1.6 billion is incorrectly paid out due to what are thought to be genuine errors by claimants.

Neil Couling, Director General for Fraud, Disability and Health at the Department for Work and Pensions, stated: "Fraud is such a big volume that you can't prosecute your way out of this problem. So we are reserving our prosecutions for the most egregious, the big, organised cases.

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"For individualised frauds, there is a series of administrative penalties we would apply rather than go to the courts, because the courts themselves are very busy with their own backlogs of prosecutions that they are trying to work through." Current statistics reveal a backlog of 73,000 cases of all types awaiting trial in crown courts.

But Debbie Abrahams, who chairs the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, urged caution, saying: "We need to be very, very careful before we make statements about 'this is a societal trend'. It's a very serious accusation to put on the public that we are becoming increasingly fraudulent."

Sir Pete Schofield, Permanent Secretary of the Department, said: "There were some days where we had 100,000 people claiming in one day and we took a decision that it was a priority for the department to pay people and get people into payment which we were very successful at doing, but the result of that was that we saw fraud and error come into the system."